John Harvey - Cold Light

Nancy patted the sequined bag she held in her lap.

“Condoms?” Dana laughed.

Nancy stuck out her tongue. “It isn’t going to be that kind of night.”

Dana, sitting back in the corner of the cab, smiling. “You never know.”

Nancy did: what she had in her bag, ever hopeful, were three Lillets.

The cab swung out of the Park, into incoming traffic on Derby Road. They were approaching Canning Circus when Nancy suddenly leaned forward, asking the driver to stop.

“What’s the matter?” Dana asked. “What’ve you forgotten?”

“Nothing.” Nancy opened the nearside door. “I’m just popping into the police station, that’s all.”

“Whatever for?”

“It doesn’t matter. You go on. I’ll meet you at the hotel. Go straight there. Bye.”

Nancy pushed the cab door closed and stood a moment, watching the vehicle pull away, Dana’s face, perplexed, staring back through the glass.

The officer on the duty desk had phoned Resnick’s office to inform him he had a visitor, not quite able to keep the smirk out of his voice. It wasn’t until Nancy Phelan walked in through the door to the deserted CID room that Resnick understood why.

“Inspector …”

“Yes?”

“I was here earlier today …”

“I remember.” Resnick smiled. “Not dressed like that.”

Nancy gave a half-smile in return. She had unbuttoned the borrowed red coat walking up the stairs and now it hung loose from her shoulders. “Christmas Eve, you know how it is. Everyone out on the town.”

While Kevin Naylor held the fort, Resnick had nipped home to feed the cats, brushed his best suit, ironed a white shirt, buffed his shoes, scraped a few fragments of pesto sauce from his tie. The one night of the year he tried to make an impression. “I’ve got changed myself,” he said pleasantly.

“Sorry,” Nancy said, “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Yes, well … what exactly was it you …”

“About this afternoon …”

“Yes?”

“Like I said, nothing really happened, to me I mean. It wasn’t, you know, this big traumatic thing or anything.”

“But it’s on your mind all the same.”

“Is it?”

Resnick shrugged large shoulders. “You’re here.”

“Yes, but that’s not because of me. It’s him.”

“Him?”

“James. Gary James.”

“What about him?”

Nancy fidgeted her feet on the office floor. “I’m not sure. I suppose … All it was, I had this thought, like, when I was passing, literally, going past outside … I didn’t want to think that he was cooped up in here, in some cell over Christmas because of me.”

The social worker had contacted Lynn Kellogg after the doctor had carried out his examination: Karl’s injuries were not inconsistent with the explanation that his mother had given-he had run headlong into a heavy wooden door. Social Services would keep a watching brief and if there was any further cause for concern … Gary James had been released a little over half an hour ago, warned as to his future behavior, and made to understand there was a possibility charges might still be brought.

“You don’t have to worry,” Resnick said. “We’ve let him go.”

Nancy’s smile was a delight to behold. “And that’s the end of it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But …”

“There are other things, other issues involved.” Resnick moved towards the door and she followed him, the worn carpet muffling the clip of her heels.

“You won’t be needing me again then? Testimony in court or anything?”

“I shouldn’t think so. It’s unlikely.”

Somehow, close in the doorway, she seemed taller, her face only inches from his own.

“Well, Merry Christmas, I suppose,” Nancy said, and for one absurd moment Resnick thought she was going to breach that distance between them with a kiss.

“Merry Christmas,” Resnick said, as she walked down the corridor. “And tonight, have a good time.”

At the head of the stairs, Nancy raised her hand and waved. “You too,” she said.

Resnick turned back towards his office, started putting out the lights.

How it worked was this: large-scale bookings were given a banqueting room of their own, smaller parties were encouraged to share. Either way the format was the same-long lines of tables on opposite sides of a central dance floor, a DJ in a cream suit waiting to slip Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” in between Abba and Rolf Harris doing terrible things to “Stairway to Heaven.” Plates of food were bounced down in efficient relays; soup, egg mayonnaise, a blue ticket brought turkey, a pink, salmon; the fruit salad came with cream or without. Two bottles of wine every eight people, one red, one white; any further drinks you fetched yourself from the cellar bar. If that became too crowded, it was always possible to cross the courtyard into the main body of the hotel, pass between reception and the wide armchairs of the foyer, and use the bar there.

“All right now!” the DJ overpitched into his mike above the final scraping of plates and the rising tide of conversation. “Who’s gonna be the first ones on the floor?”

“What d’you say, Charlie,” Reg Cossall barked into Resnick’s ear, “we get ourselves out of here and get a real drink?”

“Later, maybe, Reg. Later.”

Cossall scraped back his chair, pushed himself to his feet. “I’ll be across the other side for a bit, if you change your mind. Then, likely, I’ll head down the Bell.”

Times long past, Resnick had closed too many bars with Reg Cossall to forget the mornings after. He’d stick where he was for another half hour or so, long enough to show willing, then slip away and leave them to it. He could see Divine revving up already, on his feet a couple of tables down, trying to encourage one of the new WPCs on to the floor, offering to pull her Christmas cracker.

“Come feel the noize!” called the DJ, turning the volume up on Slade and letting the decibels bounce off the ceiling.

Jack Skelton was wearing a dinner jacket, a midnight-blue bow tie; he was standing against the side wall, deep in conversation with Helen Siddons, recently promoted DCI and using the city as a stepping stone on her fast track to the top. They made an elegant pair, standing there, Siddons in an ankle-length pale green gown.

From his seat, Resnick glanced around, concerned that Skelton’s wife might be sitting in need of company. What he saw were Kevin Naylor and his wife Debbie, smiling into one another’s eyes, holding hands. Second honeymoon, Resnick thought, and not before time. Like a lot of marriages in the force, this one seemed to have been disintegrating before his eyes. It was more than a sign of the times; even when families had seemed more stable and relationships didn’t come with their own sell-by date, police divorce figures had been high. How many times had Reg Cossall bought the CID room cigars and signed his name in the registrar’s book? Two? Three? And rumor had it he was trying for one more. Resnick sat back down. Either you were like Reg or you tried once and when that was over, shut the doors and threw away the key.

Which is it with you, Charlie?

He could see Skelton’s wife Alice now, three rows down, tilting back her head as she finished her wine, reaching out to refill the glass, tapping a cigarette from the pack on the table before her, small gold lighter from her bag, the head tilting back again as she released a swathe of gray smoke, feathering past her eyes.

“Alice?” He stood alongside her, waiting for her to turn.

“Charlie. Well … how nice. A social call?”

Resnick shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable. “I saw you …”

“On my own? A damsel in distress. Alone and palely loitering.”